Our New York Times Problem and Theirs

Deborah Sontag had a good day yesterday, at least by her minimalistic standards. There were but two “right-wing” and three “far-right” references in her characteristically undistinguished report of Mr. Sharon’s efforts to establish a national unity government.

When political writers, including at the Times, describe the likes of Jesse Helms, “conservative” is the term that’s fit to print. “Right-wing” and “far-right” are perjoratives usually reserved for those who are outside the pale of legitimate political activity. Mr. Sharon is treated differently because the ideologically driven, cliché-ridden head of the NYT’s Israel bureau doesn’t like what he stands for and does not have the skill to delve into the complexities of Israeli political life. In fact, Mr. Sharon is quite liberal on many issues.

I do not know whether the Times has a rulebook mandating the use of negative language in reports from Israel. Probably not. I am certain that there is a culture of Jewish self-hate on West 43rd Street, a phobia about appearing too Jewish that has endured during the 100+ years that the Ochs’ and Sulzbergers have owned the newspaper. This is a family of serial Jewish self-haters. They gave us a culture that resulted in opposition to Jewish appointees to the Supreme Court and journalists identified by their first initials because their first and middle names were too Jewish to be fit to print. And it is a culture that forever stained the record of the Times when it chose to report little and say little about the murder of European Jewry.

The paper acknowledged the error of its ways at a centennial celebration several years ago, in a brief statement included in an exhibit. The in petto nature of the apology undermined both its sincerity and efficacy. So far as we know, the Times has never examined why it acted so ignobly or whether Jewish lives might have been saved had the world’s most influential newspaper done its journalistic duty.

The Times is a magnificent institution and its Israel coverage is no worse and probably better than what we get elsewhere in the U.S., including the Washington Post, Boston Globe (NYT-owned) and the Los Angeles Times whose cartoonists seem to have gotten their training at der Sturmer.

In a sense, the Times’ Jewish problem is that it writes too much, that it focuses on Jewish minutiae, a tendency that inevitably transforms minor stories about warts and misdeeds into significant news. As major events around the globe are virtually ignored or downplayed, the Times incessantly covers Israel and Jews; whatever the intention, the results frequently are not fortuitous.

I am not eager to join the unforgiving anti-Jesse Jackson bandwagon. He has been over-pilloried for his incautious “Hymietown” eons ago. But Jackson has gotten a free ride, including at the NYT, in his latest indiscretions, both personal and financial.

This kid gloves treatment can be contrasted with the Times’ recent obituary of a Chassidic Rebbe who lived in Borough Park. It was of course necessary to report that a second cousin of the deceased had several followers who were convicted of fraud. In this instance, the New York Times met the National Enquirer.

There are people who regard the Time’s hyper-attention to Israel and Jews as good news, as a sign that we have made it in America and are respected. They are wrong and foolish. We shall have arrived – at least journalistically – when there is a sense of proportion, when we are not neglected or put under a microscope, when ordinary occurrences are not transformed into inflated stories. To the extent that Jews contribute to the pathological attention paid to our minutiae, they are doing harm to the community.

I used to think that it is useless to criticize the Times. I still think this way, but I am less certain. At a recent discussion of media coverage of the Middle East, Clyde Haberman, a talented Timesman, reacted to a barrage of criticism of his newspaper by, according to a story in this newspaper, advising “those who get overwrought by the Times’ coverage to stop reading the paper and preserve their health.”

What a wonderful attitude by a journalist who lives by the First Amendment.

The Neglected Right

A civil right that people do not know about isn’t a civil right, as important as it may be to those who need its protection. Rights need to find expression in law and acknowledgement, if not also acceptance, in public opinion and the media. By this standard, the employment rights of religious persons do not pass muster. There are laws – federal and state – but scant recognition that they exist. This is the civil right that isn’t.

Prospects were better a generation ago. In the last 1960’s, Greyhound fired a Black Muslim bus driver named Ibrahim. His misdeed was that out of religious conviction he had a beard and the company claimed that it might become entangled in the vehicle’s steering wheel, endangering the lives of passengers. Although the notion was absurd, it scarcely mattered because there were no laws protecting religious persons against job discrimination. The usual victims were Sabbath observers, many of them Orthodox Jews.

A few years earlier, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs or COLPA was established to promote the legal and legislative needs of Orthodox Jewry. I was the group’s first president. We learned of the Ibrahim matter and successfully interceded on his behalf, thereby opening up an area of fruitful activity. In quick order, Congress protected Sabbath observers and key states followed suit, cases were brought and won, usually by COLPA attorneys who were associates at prestigious law firms, and attention was being paid.

Everything was coming up roses or so it seemed. The passage of time, however, has not been kind to the cause. Orthodox Jews are now employed in many places where they once weren’t welcome. Progress has been made. But COLPA is barely alive and while there are more than ten times the number of Orthodox lawyers in major firms than there were 30 years ago, there isn’t as much as one-tenth of the pro bono legal work.

In the meantime, employers who are determined to discriminate have become more sophisticated. It doesn’t take much to figure out that a yarmulka-wearing applicant is not going to be at the job on Friday evenings and Saturdays. Worst of all, thousands of Orthodox Jews who have been hired work at back-office jobs, with little hope of advancement and at salaries that are insufficient to provide for their families.

Enforcement of the rights of Sabbath observers has been hampered by an overdose of benign neglect. Our major organizations talk a good game about tolerance and civil rights, but that’s for other people, not for Orthodox Jews. I suppose that an aversion to publicity is what prevents Jewish defense organizations from declaring their opposition to job market discrimination against religious Jews.

Neglect breeds further neglect, so that what is incorporated in civil rights laws has become the civil right that isn’t. Whatever little media coverage there is tends to be perfunctory.

This state of affairs is illustrated by the recent settlement reached by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer with Jean Louise David, the chain of hair salons. The company fired Eliezer Katanov, a Russian immigrant who insisted on keeping his yarmulka on as he cut off his clients’ hair. The settlement provides for important accommodations to religious Jews, which is to the company’s credit.

Unfortunately, the larger message of the settlement is being lost because the story has scarcely been covered.

Much the same happened last year when Mr. Spitzer reached a comprehensive settlement with Sears Roebuck after it refused to hire Sabbath observers as repair technicians. The benefits of an important civil rights victory were diminished because of inattention. Incidentally, these settlements were substantially the work of my son Avi who serves as deputy counsel to the Attorney General, a circumstance that is gratifying because he is continuing something that I began a generation ago and because of the intelligence and courage that he has shown.

More of us have to understand that it is wrong to discriminate in the workplace against religious persons. It’s wrong because it is against the law. It’s wrong because it’s immoral. It’s wrong because society is being hurt. And it’s wrong for American Jewry which talks a good game about civil rights and tolerance to continue to do so little to assist religious Jews.

But charity, civil rights and tolerance ought to begin at home.

Let's Get to the Truth About Pollard

For those who believe that a plainly guilty man cannot be railroaded, Jonathan Jay Pollard proves otherwise. Even his most ardent proponents now acknowledge his wrongdoing. As yet, there is no corollary recognition that the U.S. government has not acted justly in the case. That will come, although it's far from certain that Pollard will be alive when it does.

Despite the inadvertent governmental efforts to make Pollard a martyr, he is no Dreyfus or, for that matter, a hero. He is the rather unattractive victim of a process that is both Kafkaesque and Catch 22.

The government's misdeeds began shortly after he was arrested. In line with standard procedure in spy cases, there was a plea bargain, with presumed understandings regarding the sentences to be given to Pollard and his former wife. The lead prosecutor found a pretense to disavow what had been agreed to and then there was the infamous top-secret memorandum sent by Caspar Weinberger, who himself was pardoned by President Bush.

The ignoble trail picked up recruits along the way, including the draconian sentencing judge, the two Jewish appellate judges - one was Ruth Bader Ginsburg - who stood idly (but not silently) by as an injustice was given judicial approval, and public officials, including a former senator from New York and a noted Jewish senator from Connecticut, who whispered along the way that spying for Israel was only a part of Pollard's career in espionage, that he did worse things for more dangerous countries.

For all of the attention given the case, its most surprising aspect is how little we know. There was Wolf Blitzer's early book and newspaper stories aplenty telling of efforts to secure Pollard's release. Yet, we scarcely know more now than what we knew when American Jewry was badly rattled by Pollard's arrest and revelations of spying for Israel.

This is unsettling. Put simply, the question is, Why don't we know more? Where are the leaks? Washington is full of insiders eager to talk to investigative reporters and they don't clam up when the subject turns to spying. Blitzer got his information from inside sources. Seymour Hersh has made a career of turning intelligence secrets into journalistic copy. As perhaps exhibit no.1, there is the Ames case which involved espionage for the Soviet Union within the CIA, and the resulting murder of agents who were double-crossed by Ames. We know this and much more because intelligence officials talked and what they said was reported.

The Times, the great bastion of "all the news that's fit to print," has editorialized against Pollard's release but it hasn't seen fit to delve into the case, except early on and even then in a fairly superficial fashion. In contrast, there is the recent exhaustive two-part report on Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who was arrested on charges of spying for China and then released when the case against him collapsed. In its own words, "The Times undertook an extensive re-examination of the case, interviewing participants and examining scientific and government documents, many containing secrets never before disclosed." (my italics)

The Times articles on Dr. Lee are, I am confident, required reading throughout China's intelligence establishment and probably by agents in countries around the world. FBI and CIA officials were ready to talk without qualms about compromising U.S. security, even though this meant that secrets were now being disclosed. It may be that Pollard's case is different. Maybe he is the master spyman of all time, so that what he did is for all eternity super secret and lips must be sealed shut like Weinberger's communication.

I don't believe it. I believe that a perhaps understandable reluctance to disclose information at the outset has escalated into a phony façade of secrecy and officials now protect their earlier decisions to be tough toward Pollard by claiming that his sins are too great to bear or discuss or pardon.

We won't ever know if the government has its way. Pollard has a new lawyer, Elliot Lauer, a creative and experienced litigator who may come up with a legal strategy that works. The odds are not favorable.

It is of great importance to American Jews to get to the bottom of what has happened. If the fund to provide for Jewish investigative reporting is still operational, an examination of this case should become the first priority. If it isn't, our organizations ought to put together the resources needed to engage an experienced investigative team. Let them seek and they shall find, hopefully before it is too late.

Orthodoxy

This article is the start of an experiment. Over the years, my column has appeared about once a month. I now plan to write a weekly column under a paid-for arrangement along the lines pioneered in the New York Times by Albert Shanker of the Teachers Union.

Persons I respect tell me that this is a bad idea, that what is paid for is regarded as less credible, perhaps also less likely to be read. They may be right. Time will tell and down the road I will decide whether to continue. I expect to write on subjects that have always interested me – the billion-dollar mountain of waste that is the Jewish establishment, social developments in Jewish life, our political involvement and, for openers and probably quite often, Orthodoxy-bashing.

This is a form of bigotry that has taken root in a community that is smugly convinced that it is tolerant and relatively free of prejudice. The phenomenon was on display in the nasty reaction to President Clinton’s reduction of the sentences given to chassidim convicted of fraud in governmental programs. What they did was wrong, terribly wrong, but this does not justify the extraordinary stereotypical language used by the lead prosecutor throughout the case or the hostility shown to Mr. Clinton’s decision. The guilty people will continue to serve a rather lengthy term.

Like other socially accepted forms of bigotry, it’s difficult to challenge the moral disease that is Orthodoxy-bashing or even to find the right response. There’s always the risk of sounding too shrill, of perhaps seeing enemies where there aren’t any. Worse yet, there’s the danger of becoming too predictable. Most Orthodox Jews I know are resigned to the attacks, their attitude being, “They hate us and there’s nothing that we can do to change this.”

I cannot claim that efforts to counteract Orthodoxy bashing have yielded beneficial results, certainly not if the media – Jewish and general – are the barometers. Distortion, half-truths and stereotypes have become standard fare for writers who out of ignorance or bias deprecate religious Jews. Here are two fresh examples from respected writers and respected publications.

In a Sunday Times book review of Yehudah Bauer’s new book on the Holocaust, Morris Dickstein, distinguished professor at CUNY writes acceptingly of Bauer’s “debunking” of “Orthodox religious thinkers like the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson who compared the Holocaust to a surgical amputation resulting from the sins of the Jews past and present.” The sentiment is entirely antithetical to the Rebbe’s teaching and outlook. But we now have Bauer and Dickstein and a defamatory comment that will be cited by others who regard it as authoritative.

Then there is this from Yossi Klein Halevi in The New Republic on the Israeli elections: When ultra-Orthodox rabbis “endorse a candidate, community activists ensure near-total voter participation, emptying out the nursing homes on Election Day and even sometimes ‘resurrecting’ the recently deceased by recycling their identity cards.” This is inane, false and, in the context of the article, gratuitous. Politics and people being what they are, I can’t say that this has never happened, although this pales in comparison to the well-publicized electoral abuses of Likud and Labor. In any case, Klein does not pretend to convey the story of isolated abuses; rather, he implicates an entire community in electoral fraud. As Klein knows, because of class and theological considerations, there is relatively low voter turnout among the most Orthodox.

Too many Jews accept uncritically, even happily, the worst that is said about the Orthodox. Too many Jews want to believe the worst because stereotypical thinking has become the accepted way of describing this small community. Each distortion and half-truth – and there are plenty of them – add bogus credibility to what is false. It matters little that fellow Jews are being shamed and pained for no reason other than their religiosity. It also matters little that what passes as legitimate journalism, and, at times, scholarship, would be rejected as deeply bigoted if similar language were used to describe other ethnic groups.

In 1943, Justice Felix Frankfuter began his emotional dissent in the Second Flag Salute case by saying that he was a member of the most persecuted and vilified race in history. The Orthodox are a tiny minority of the small minority that are known as Jews. They also are by far the most vilified, if not also the most persecuted.

January 2001 - RJJ Newsletter

If yeshivas and fundraising seem like inseparable Siamese twins, it’s because they usually are. While there are day schools – mainly in the non-Orthodox and Modern-Orthodox sectors – that command high tuition, offer meager scholarship assistance and live nearly entirely off parental payments, yeshivas and many day schools operate at the brink of financial disaster. They cannot survive without outside assistance.

A yeshiva’s educational program has standards, both religious and academic. One goal is to teach subject matter and to encourage the intellectual growth of students. Another and perhaps more important goal is to inculcate these youngsters in a religious lifestyle. Fundraising is a means toward these ends. Perhaps because these ends are important, there is a tendency to be lax, to relax ethical standards and to accept the invidious notion that in fundraising, the end justifies the means.

This is understandable in view of the grueling pressures school officials face as they scurry to cover bank overdrafts and to meet their obligations. An explanation of wrongdoing does not convert what is wrong into a right. When yeshivas act improperly, their sacred mission is violated. We have every right to expect more exacting ethical standards in the institutions that are central to our religious life.

Fundraising excesses tend to be irritants rather than serious departures from appropriate behavior. This is true of telemarketing, one of the banes of modern civilization and also a favorite device of fundraisers who are bereft of creativity. They opt for paltry financial gain as they forfeit the good will of people who might provide more substantial support.

Although some may think otherwise, the common practice of charities buying and selling contributors lists is a rotten way to raise money. It is malodorous for an institution to reward those who support it by peddling their names to some other charity. Lay leaders have a obligation to see that this business does not occur at the places for which they have responsibility.

Fundraising encompasses the search for governmental assistance, when it is to be had. Even with the powerful strictures against aid to religious schools, some public funding is available. Usually it is indirect or based on formulas that reduce the opportunity for mischief. However, if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees at long last to review the school voucher issue and they are ruled constitutional, a new and far more serious dynamic will be set into motion and the moral fortitude of our vital educational institutions and their leaders may be tested.

The issue confronting yeshivas is not the constitutionality of vouchers. The Orthodox community reached a consensus in the 1960’s that governmental aid to parochial schools is consistent with the doctrine of separation of church and state. Of course, overwhelmingly American Jews do not agree and they and their organizations have maintained without let-up the fanciful notion that the Republic, as well as public education, will be endangered should governmental support be provided for just the secular programs of religious schools. It apparently counts for nothing that in those democracies where public funds are provided in this fashion, the experience has not brought about the predicted untoward results. It apparently also matters very little that public education is short-changing millions of children, mainly in the minority communities.

I may be the most veteran proponent of government aid in all of American Jewry, since my first article supporting assistance to public schools appeared in the 1950’s. But while the validity of using public funds is not in my judgment a legitimate concern, there is the unavoidable question of whether such aid is wise. The problem is the inevitable link that will be established between governmental and political and communal scoundrels. Most governmental funding programs contain at least the seeds for corruption and some provide an open invitation to those who are intent on doing wrong. This is especially the case when there is a means test attached to the public benefit, as is likely to be true of voucher arrangements. There are those, including in our community, who know how to exploit such opportunities for inappropriate institutional and personal gain.

At the least, our advocacy of vouchers must come with the recognition of the inherent dilemma confronting us. We must recognize that unless programs are tailored to minimize subjectivity on the part of government officials and unless we approach what is being offered to us with a sense of restraint and responsibility befitting our religious obligations, along with much-needed financial support, governmental assistance will result in a measure of Chilul Hashem.

Lindsay And The Jews

(Originially published in the New York Jewish Week)

I served in the second mayoral administration of John Lindsay. There were achievements during those years (1969-1973) that I continue to be proud of, and battles that I lost. This is, I think, the first time that I have written about the experience and probably the last. For all of his administration’s shortcomings, it is important to note that Lindsay was a good mayor, and his detractors have misrepresented both the record and the man, who was kind and caring.

I believe that history will judge him favorably, despite a troubled relationship with some of New York’s Jews. He was mayor during a period of profound change in American society and politics, as well as in Jewish life, changes that made certain that his reform agenda would have rough going in a city that had special meaning to Jews everywhere.

The 1960s saw the abandonment of the fantasy notion of the melting pot, especially among New York’s ethnics, and the transformation of the genteel civil rights movement into the Black Power movement, with its rage and militancy. This was also the period of the Great Society, with its embrace of community action and proffer of programs based on the naïve assumption that tons of money, good motives and determined activity could break the cycle of deprivation that entrapped millions of Americans who had the wrong color skin.

Since the reality could not attain the lofty goals of the promise, these developments inadvertently contained the seeds of disappointment and anger, even violent protest. New York was nearly entirely spared such protests, though, in some measure because Lindsay walked the streets and showed that he cared. This was admittedly a preventative success but it was significant, if only because the maintenance of civil order through empathy and persuasion and without force is a high moral and political achievement.

While Lindsay could control physical eruptions, his administration could not control the new emotionalism of Jews, particularly those who lived in the outer boroughs and who came to believe that what was being done for the minorities was at their expense. In a sense, Lindsay and his inner circle operated on the premise that urban politics is a zero-sum game, so that money, appointments and other goodies could assure that there was enough to go around, that what was being done for blacks did not cost the Jews anything. This was a miscalculation because there was no reckoning of the emotional cost.

After 20 years of what seemed to be communal amnesia, Jews discovered or rediscovered in the 1960s the horrors of the Holocaust. This awakening deeply affected their reaction to contemporary events. Piggy-backing to an extent on the Black Power movement, there was a new sense of Jewish identity and activism. The struggle for the no-longer-silent Soviet Jewry added to the new Jewish ethnic brew. Even the Six-Day War in 1967, a reawakening for many American Jews, turned out to be unsettling, leading to new security issues that have yet to be resolved.

“Never again” was the slogan of the JDL and its bullies, but it is important to know that it was also the belief of many other American Jews as well.

When Lindsay acted to improve the lot of blacks and other minorities, emotional wounds were opened. School decentralization, vesting power in local boards representative of the communities, began at about the same time as the teachers’ union, which was predominantly Jewish in that period. Open admissions altered the City College system that had been a treasure of the Jewish experience in New York. A controversial Forest Hills housing project was to be built in a substantially Jewish neighborhood.

It hardly mattered whether Lindsay’s policies were right or wrong, effective or not. It didn’t matter either that minorities deserved a better deal and that black advancement was good and necessary for America. It didn’t mean much that the Lindsay administration was chock full of Jews at the top, at City Hall and the agencies, except perhaps that these Jews were accused of selling out. In fact, it didn’t count for much that a great number of New York Jews liked Mayor Lindsay and warmly supported his policies. None of this mattered to those Jews who were angry because open nerves were touched and emotional scar tissue was bruised once more.

Pick-And-Choose Judaism

(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)

Samuel Freedman’s “Jew vs. Jew” is the most important book on American Jewry since the publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey highlights sent our community into a frenzy about Jewish survival. The book is fair-minded, a delight to read and it suggests, albeit inadvertently, why the statistics that are soon to emerge from NJPS 2000 are likely to be irrelevant, no matter how much attention they may receive.

We are, quite extraordinarily, in a post-assimilationist, post-intermarriage phase. Religion is trumpeted everywhere, adding to the impression that we have turned a successful corner and that the large investment in continuity activities has paid off. In some legerdemain of language and belief, mainstream American Jewry has embraced the notion that Jews are a religious people. It apparently matters little, if at all, that most American Jews have departed nearly entirely from traditional religious standards. There is, we are being told, a return to religion, not because of increased Sabbath observance or any other observance but because we now acknowledge that religion is in some fashion central to being Jewish.

It is in this sense that Freedman is right when he says that “the Orthodox model has triumphed.” As he underscores, “this is not to say the Orthodox themselves have prevailed.” Rather, “against a backdrop of ever-more complete assimilation,” there is growing acceptance of “the central premise of Orthodoxy that religion binds Jewish identity.”

The Orthodox continue to grow in numbers and influence and they pick up some adherents, but overwhelmingly their growth is internal.

For the foreseeable future their model will compete with the Reconstructionist model, the brand of choice for a great majority of American Jews who want some religion in their lives.

The significance of the Reconstructionist model is perhaps the best-kept secret in contemporary Jewish affairs, which isn’t surprising in view of the smallness of the formal movement and in view of the tendency to emphasize the Reform and Conservative movements, which claim several million members. The terms “Reform” and “Conservative” remain critical taglines in identifying American Jews, but it is certain that for most adherents of these denominations, a Reconstructionist pattern of religious life prevails.

This pattern encompasses a far-reaching set of practices and beliefs that are arrayed, in a figurative sense, in smorgasbord fashion. Each Jew is free to determine what to partake of. Judaism exists to serve the individual, an attitude that is in tune with the American ethos. Accordingly, intermarriage is a personal choice, and for all of its inescapable social consequences and even religious consequences, it does not remove the Jew who marries out from the pale of Jewish religious life if that Jew engages in other behavior that marks him or her as a religious person.

This is a form of “I’m OK, you’re OK” Judaism. If a religious element is included in one’s lifestyle, the religious standard has been met.

There is something seductive about this approach. Jews can at once be non-religious, perhaps even anti-religious, with regard to virtually all that has defined the religious character of our people for generations and yet also be considered religious because in some atrophied fashion they are engaged in religious behavior. Attention is paid to the small percent of the religious glass that is filled. This allows us to be comfortable about what is happening in Jewish life. We can have massive Judaic abandonment together with a measure of transmuted observance.

Some Orthodox are being drawn to the Reconstructionist model. This is most evident, perhaps inescapably, in outreach activities where much leeway is given to the unaffiliated, non-observant or limited-observant Jews who are being reached out to. There is an acceptance — and it isn’t just for a short while — of behaviors and attitudes that bear a close resemblance to a Reconstructionist sensibility.

While Orthodox outreach continues to speak of the goal being acceptance of a fully religious lifestyle, in most instances the final destination is an intermediate point that leaves the returnee no different from the vast numbers who accept the Reconstructionist model.

A recent New Yorker article makes the point in a Lillian Ross profile of Miss New York State of 1999, a devout Christian who through her new Jewish boyfriend finds her way to Hineni and Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, the charismatic outreach advocate who packs them in each week at Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun, the upscale Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

There is a more internalized acceptance of a Reconstructionist mind-set within Orthodoxy, notably its modernist fringe. According to this outlook, given much publicity when Sen. Joseph Lieberman became Al Gore’s running mate, there is much room for maneuverability within halacha, including how to observe Sabbath fundamentals. Although this is a special case arising from Mr. Lieberman’s unique situation, his behavior is far more reflective of aspects of Modern Orthodoxy than has been recognized.

The majority of Orthodox adhere, of course, to a far more rigorous religious regimen. This is the model that Sam Freedman has in mind when he writes of the Orthodox triumph. It remains, though, that this model is being challenged by the Reconstructionists, who while they are skating on thin historical and ideological ice, have made much progress.

In the cavernous realm of communal philanthropic activities aimed at shoring up Jewish identity, it is convenient to believe that resources are primarily being devoted to the promotion of the Orthodox model.

It is a remarkable irony that nearly all that is being done in the name of sensitivity to Orthodoxy — including some of the work I do — has the primary effect, if not also the purpose, of advancing the Reconstructionist model.